A new leak gives us more information about the specifications of the upcoming AMD Dragon Range and AMD Phoenix CPUs. Both lines are next-generation Zen 4 processors made for laptops, although each will have its own niche.
With the specifications of Dragon Range and Phoenix now coming into play, it looks like AMD will be well positioned to compete against its rivals, Intel and Nvidia, in future gaming laptops.
Red Gaming Tech (RGT) on YouTube talked about the capabilities and specifications of some of the Ryzen 7000 processors for the mobile industry. AMD Dragon Range and Phoenix will power laptops for gamers, but while Dragon Range will focus on delivering the best possible CPU performance, Phoenix will be competitive thanks to its integrated RDNA 3 iGPU.
Let’s start with Dragon Range. According to Red Gaming Tech, AMD approaches the line in the same way that Intel did with Alder Lake-HX. This means that the manufacturer is downsizing desktop Raphael CPUs to fit laptops without having to compromise specifications too much. As a result, the top four filtered processor today will have the most cores of any AMD mobile CPU to date.
According to rumor, the Ryzen 9 7980HX will come with 16 cores, followed by the Ryzen 9 7900HX with 12 cores. There’s also a Ryzen 7 entry, the Ryzen 7 7800HX with eight cores, as well as the Ryzen 5 7600HX with just six cores. Clock speeds will vary and can reach up to 5 GHz or more in magnification mode while oscillating between 3.6 GHz and 4 GHz or more at base frequencies.
AMD Dragon Range will be powerful in terms of CPU performance, but it will lag behind when it comes to the integrated graphics card. The idea here is that AMD wants to offer these CPUs in gaming enthusiast laptops, which will usually have one of the best GPUs installed anyway. As such, Dragon Range only includes two RDNA 2 computing units, which will not be enough to fuel any serious game. However, there really is no need to do this: CPUs of this caliber will be combined with a discrete graphics card.
Red Gaming Tech
Moving on to AMD Phoenix (also known as Phoenix Point), the CPU clearly has a very different approach. While it’s still a Zen 4 processor, the focus here has shifted to providing a good gaming experience even with thin, lightweight laptops. Because it was created to power lightweight laptops, Phoenix will run between 35 and 45 watts, keeping power requirements low and battery life higher. This often translates into poor gaming performance, but AMD has an ace up its sleeve in the form of RDNA 3 graphics.
Compared to Dragon Range, Phoenix is said to serve up to six times more GPU cores, which means up to 12 computing units. As RGT pointed out, this means up to 1536 shaders and an iGPU clock frequency of up to 3GHz. AMD may be expecting to rival the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 mobile with the top variant of Phoenix.
In this line, RGT also expects four different processors, the AMD Ryzen 9 7980HS, the Ryzen 9 7900HS, the Ryzen 7 7800HS and finally the Ryzen 5 7600HS. These processors will provide better graphics at the expense of a significantly reduced kernel count, ranging from eight to six cores.
If the rumors are true, next-generation gaming laptops based on AMD’s CPU and APU will have a lot to offer. However, before they hit the market, we have the Ryzen 7000 for desktops and the launch of Intel Raptor Lake to wait until the end of the year.
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